People are really misunderstanding Skills, in my opinion. It's not really about the .md file. It's about the bundling of code and instructions. Skills assume a code execution environment.
We have to find a way to punish Google if they move forward with this. We need the Gemini folks to be worried that this distraction will jeopardize their competitiveness in AI.
> I could certainly install MinIO (a S3 compatible object store) on a home NAS and charge people for it
But how would that work? You'd probably make a website or app that had users sign up for an account, and then with that account they could associate payment information from a payment processing company, and then you'd provide them with credentials where they could log in to their Minio instance. Right?
Then, you have to go out and market your service, explain to people why they should use it instead of existing alternatives, convince people that you're trustworthy, build a reputation, and generally do sales.
In the case of Sia, you build your host, plug it in, announce it to the Sia blockchain, and then clients from all around the world start paying to use your storage.
Clients don't have to register for an account first, don't have to involve a third-party payment processing company, and don't need a sales pitch because they algorithmically test, measure, and rank hosts.
I remember at the outset of the web, a new thing was this user demand for services to become "self-serve", as in, you would no longer need to talk to a salesperson and establish a relationship in order to buy something — even something custom. I see this as the next step of that, where you want to be able to programmatically and algorithmically establish and dissolve those kinds of service agreements.
> Is it cheaper to implement it on blockchain than by conventional means?
It's more so that anyone can join the network as a host. They don't have to have a financial or business relationship with anyone, they can just provide their storage service and charge for it. No way to do that currently in the world without a blockchain.
Users of Sia are the customers. So your question reduces to: who uses Sia? It used to mostly be interesting for customers interested in reliable large-file data backup on the cheap, but now it has expanded to customers looking to do content distribution on the web, etc.